Tidbits from London showing

[shihonage]

the supposed 60fps holy grail is based on how much smoother it looks and how many more packets you're sending a server in a multiplayer game than the person using the stock 30fps, since quite often the packet sending rate and maxfps are tied to each other.

Actually, the packets are not tied to the target framerate at all. Not in any game since and including Quake 1, at the very least. The lockstep multiplayer scheme is highly flawed, and is only used in some online RTS games nowadays.

When you play your favorite FPS, i.e. COD4 or Quake Wars online, even if you get 250fps, the rate at which they send and receive data remains something like 15-20pps (packets per second).

The rest is done by movement interpolation routines.

The humans are fooled because there's a profound difference between how many frames you can spot with your eye, and how fast you can react to an event. Just because you can tell 40fps from 50fps doesn't mean that it won't take you 1/5th of a second to acknowledge and consciously react to something happening. If you're good.

 

[whirlingdervish]

If Fallout 3 is like Oblivion you're not going to be played a "fast paced action game" in the traditional sense, nor will you be playing online.

30 FPS is perfectly normal.

something about those "lightnin fast zombie/ghouls" leads me to believe otherwise...

But, I haven't played Oblivion, so you may be right. It could be very slow for a shooter, so FPS may not make too much of a difference as you're sniping muties from a long way off with a rifle and scope, ala Resident Evil 4..

I am kinda suspicious that all of the rockets and chainguns and lasers and such, might be why they plan to have the FPS around a stable 30..

any higher and you'd get dips in the FPS as all those projectiles get unleashed on screen along with their resulting particle effects...

 

[Ravager69]

Man, this game'll kill my PC. Anyway, I highly doubt anyone will run it on full detail on the rigs we have available now. Most people still can't run Oblivion on medium details and have a decent rig.

I pull Oblivion and Bioshock at max off a 3 year old nVidia GeForce 7600 GS. Then again, the card is infused with a demonic spirit conjured from out of the pages of the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, so I have an unfair advantage.
Edit: Yes, the card actually does devour the souls of the computers it's put in. It's been through 2 so far. First one exploded, leaving only the video card intact.

And what are your other componets, like RAM or proccessor? Oblivion takes the hell out of them, not the video card (which is important, too, but not as much). Besides, it's grahpics don't look as good as they should compared to what you need to make it run on full detail (4x AA, 16x Aniso etc., not just te texture quality)

 

[goffy59]

But I thought they were developing for the PC mainly because they didn't want to make the same mistake as they did with Oblivion. Bethesda are a bunch fucking liars. I once read it in the interview; they said they were trying to make the PC experience really good and not make it look like a port from the 360.

they've said the 360 is the primary developing platform right from the start. They've never lied about that.

Thanks for the info.

 

[Madbringer]

If Fallout 3 is like Oblivion you're not going to be played a "fast paced action game" in the traditional sense, nor will you be playing online.

30 FPS is perfectly normal.

I'll have to actually play the game before i can be sure. I would tend to agree with you, though, but i am not really sure how fast paced Fallout 3's combat will be.

If it will be mildly paced, with a crippled, "tactical" movement physics model, lots of crouching behind obstacles etc, then yeah, 30 fps will do just fine.

But if the game will be at least fast, with a complex movement physics model, more projectile than hitscan weapons, and lots of HP to lose before you die/kill, then 30 fps will be not nearly enough for the game to be smooth.

 

[Ausir]

The goal is that, if I get three versions in here and hide the console or PC and just had them running on the screen, that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

I hope he doesn't mean that there are no interface differences as well...

 

[Bodybag]

The goal is that, if I get three versions in here and hide the console or PC and just had them running on the screen, that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

I hope he doesn't mean that there are no interface differences as well...

They've said on multiple occasions that the UI for the PC is being designed by separate, PC-centric team and that it will not be "like Oblivion" in terms of multiplatform comprimises. then again, they LIED about soil erosion, so who can really say how deep the rabbit-hole of treachery goes?

I'd just play it safe and assume the worst.

 

[Lingwei]

The 360 is our lead development platform, so we got it working on that one first,

Hey Pete, don't you create the content for the game on your PCs though?

 

[Ravager69]

I highly doubt this game will run smoothly on anything else than 8800GT, 4 gigs of RAM and Core2Duo\Quad.

They aren't known for making user-friendly game engines, capable of running smoothly on every PC and on lower details it'll look horrible. But it's just my guess.

 

[Pieatorium]

I highly doubt this game will run smoothly on anything else than 8800GT, 4 gigs of RAM and Core2Duo\Quad.

They aren't known for making user-friendly game engines, capable of running smoothly on every PC and on lower details it'll look horrible. But it's just my guess.

I would find that highly unlikely considering the Xbox 360 (lead platform) is essentially a low end PC. It's cpu is equivalent to early dual cores, gpu a little bit better than a 7800gtx (256 MB), 512 MB ram (it needs less than a PC because it doesn't have as much running in background however lower RAM is a major limiting factor of both consoles) and also has pretty much the same programming architecture (unlike the PS3) so I would expect the game to run fine on most PCs bought in the last 2-3 years.

 

[Ravager69]

Uh, yeah, but don't forget it's Bethesda. They will surely use the lastest Direct X and other super-cool technology, which will choke the hell out of the game.

 

[Pieatorium]

Uh, yeah, but don't forget it's Bethesda. They will surely use the lastest Direct X and other super-cool technology, which will choke the hell out of the game.

DX10 compatability doesn't mean you cant play in DX9, also both the Xbox360 and PS3 have graphics cards that do not support the extra features of DX10 so one would have to assume that PC version will not require it.

 

[Per]

Can we all agree that, in spite of 3 million hits on Google, "compatability" is not a word?

 

[Pieatorium]

Can we all agree that, in spite of 3 million hits on Google, "compatability" is not a word?

Words are just sounds or symbols used to convey a message and as long as you can understand it's meaning whether or not something is an "actual word" isn't important.

 

[Brother None]

Can we all agree that, in spite of 3 million hits on Google, "compatability" is not a word?

Sure.

Compatibility, on the other hand, is a word.

 

[Ravager69]

Come on, not everyone knows *all* the words in english, mistakes do happen. Yeah, I know there is such a thing like dictionary.

Anyway, after the hell I went through trying to get Oblivion working on decent details, I expect no less from Fallout 3.

 

[fedaykin]

Yeah, I mean, come on. It's not like this forum has a "SpellCheck" button that magically corrects mistakes for you or something.

 

[SuAside]

“We had a year’s head start on the 360 because it came out a year earlier, so we had final dev hardware to work with earlier on than we did with PS3,”

because PCs didn't happen to be out a tad earlier, obviously.

“But as this point all three of them are pretty much on par. The goal is that, if I get three versions in here and hide the console or PC and just had them running on the screen, that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

does this mean we're stuck with the same crapass console interface again?

of course, he probably just means the SHINY GRAPHIX!

but would someone please take the time to explain to him computers can have much higher resolutions than TV screens? and that 'high definition' was ages ago on PCs?

(in before: BUT MY TV IS BIGGAR UND LOOKZ BETTAR!?!)

“Thirty frames a second is our goal, so it’s running at 30 frames a second and it’s nice and smooth,” he said, talking of the PC version.

“Yeah, that’s the goal,” he added, when asked if the 30FPS target was the same for Xbox 360 and PS3.

sadly, in PC shooter games (for reference), 30 FPS is pretty much the limit of framerate you don't want to drop below (to prevent visual distortion, crappy graphics, impaired reactions, headaches and whatnot). so if they're barely aiming for that... well, says enough about how they value the PC development versus the TV based consoles (which indeed do not need high refresh rates, since you cant tell the difference)...

“It’s an homage to the original game to have a memorable dog that you can have with you, and it’s a way to give you a companion.”

a homage to the game you're skullfucking? whooptido!

It's either that, or it's the 360 users that are really getting a potentially worse graphic-detail-wise version.

lets hope so, Wooz. but i tend to doubt it. seen too many crappy console ports.

i get painful flashbacks of Resident Evil 4 each time they talk of consoles being a primary dev platform.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

A clarification of Pete's lead platform comment by Dan Ross:

I think there's a pretty big misunderstanding as to what "lead platform" implies...

It has nothing to do with the cosmetic issues of the game's appearance or even game play itself. Read Pete's quote again, and observe that it's about how we handle the coding and testing of the game and which tools we use for that job. I think Emil and Pete and everyone else who has talked about it has said it over and over... the game is being designed for all the platforms equally from a game play perspective.

http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=833737&view=findpost&p=12122584

Sounds like a port to me or am I missing something?

 

[Brother None]

A "port" implies one is finished before the other. This isn't porting, it's co-developing.

The Xbox 360 is the lead developing platform has been explained by this being convenient because the Xbox 360 is the same for every users, including devs/testers, (not the case for PC) and because the tool kits were available (not the case for PS3).

It says extraordinarily little. I hope they live up to their promise of good cross-platform development. BioShock had a dedicated team to develop the PC version out of the main team's Xbox 360 version, that worked well.